X-Men: Days of Future Past – Reviews round-up

There are largely approving reviews for the latest X-Men film X-Men: Days of Future Past.

It’s been 14 years since Director Bryan Singer kicked off the X-Men movie franchise. In the interim, through seven films, we’ve been treated to sequels, prequels, sidequels, and requels.

Bryan Singer film has the main action, which takes place in the 1970s around the Paris peace talks that ended the Vietnam War, is framed by an apocalyptic battle in the distant future.

Singer’s return in the time-travel X-Men: Days of Future Past is largely regarded as a success because of how effortless he makes connecting the dots seem.

New York Times X-Men: Days of Future Past review by AO Scott

In the case of Days of Future Past, the plot is as overelaborate and muddled as some of the effects. The clever historical revisionism of X-Men: First Class (a high point in the series, along with X2: X-Men United) has given way to a more slapdash mix of period detail and clumsy anachronism.

But, as usual, the characters — and the performers playing them — step unto the breach to provide just enough wit and feeling to make Days of Future Past something other than a waste of a reasonable person’s time.

LA Times X-Men: Days of Future Past review by Betsy Sharkey

Days of Future Past is Singer’s first time back in the X-Men director’s chair since 2003’s X-Men 2. Though he’s slated to handle 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, the sexual abuse lawsuit that surfaced this spring make that less certain. If this should be the director’s last X-Men, it will stand as his best.

It must be said that the director melds the past and the future together, mixing eras and metaphors in ways both hard-core fans and the completely uninitiated can enjoy and understand. More significant — the film’s emotions are as transformative as the mutants.

The actors have a field day unleashing all of those pent-up feelings. McAvoy and Fassbender in particular are electric fighting and joining forces and then fighting again. As it always has been, the fate of the X-Men ultimately lies in the health of their relationship. I think the future is safe.

The Guardian X-Men: Days of Future Past review by Peter Bradshaw

Perhaps inevitably, it is in the film’s opening act where almost all the fun is to be had. Wolverine firstly recruits Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) to help him bust into the Pentagon. Quicksilver’s infinitely fast moves effectively trump every other power and superpower; it is a slight bafflement, in fact, that Quicksilver himself does not rule the world, or at least appear in much more of the film.

Finally, the X-Men extricate themselves from incoherence – more or less – with the help of a newspaper front page that explains to the audience how exactly a reasonably happy ending has supposedly been achieved. It was a dizzying but enjoyable ride.

In Singer’s new film, one of the key themes is traveling back in time to change the course of the present. It’s a movie about violating the [Star Trek] Prime Directive. The nerdy irony is that it’s Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, whose Xavier is most gung ho about rewriting history.

McAvoy and Fassbender prove that just because a movie is huge doesn’t mean you have to ham it up — that it’s possible to make a superhero flick feel as intimate as a piece of theater. I do wish that Dinklage’s Trask had more layers to his villainy and Lawrence had more to do. But these are minor complaints.